Differential contributions of phonological processing and visual-spatial abilities to four basic arithmetic operations in primary school children

This study was to investigate how phonological processing and visual-spatial abilities contributed differently to arithmetic operations including addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Eighty-eight Chinese fifth graders completed a rapid digit naming task, a character rhyming task, a figure matching task, a 3D mental rotation task, and arithmetic calculation tasks. Results showed that when controlling for age, visual acuity, and nonverbal intelligence, phonological processing accounted for unique variance in both addition and multiplication, whereas visual-spatial processing explained unique variance in subtraction and division. In particular, rapid automatized naming (hereafter, RAN) explained more of the variance in addition than mental rotation did, although both were significantly associated with addition. Mental rotation explained more of the variance in subtraction than phonological awareness and RAN did, although the three skills were all related to subtraction. Importantly, RAN was a unique correlate of multiplication, while mental rotation was a unique correlate of division. These findings highlight different contribution of the phonological processing and visual-spatial skills underlying four arithmetic operations.
Author(s): Xiao Yu [sup.1] , Kaichun Liu [sup.2] , Yuhan Wang [sup.2] , Xiujie Yang [sup.2] , Jingyuan Yang [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) https://ror.org/04xv2pc41, grid.66741.32, 0000 0001 1456 856X, Department [...]